handwritten, printed, digital – a blog about ancient, medieval & late-modern book cultures. New posts every Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Don't forget to subscribe
Borrowing library books was not a casual process in the middle ages. Sometimes borrowing was simply not allowed, and chained monastic libraries are perhaps the best example of this institutional interdiction. Secular libraries, however, almost always allowed borrowing, but not as liberally as one would imagine. For instance, Richard de Bury, the greatest bibliophile of the medieval period... Continue Reading →
The conference is set to begin this afternoon. I will try to cover David Howlett's lecture on Making the Dictionary and tomorrow's sessions. I am particularly looking forward to Neil Wright's talk on The twelfth-century renaissance in Anglo-Norman England: William of Malmesbury and Joseph of Exeter, Charles Burnett's Arabic in medieval British Latin scientific writings and Paul Brand's The Latin of the... Continue Reading →
Below are some photos from yesterday's study trip to Magdalen College, Oxford. Many thanks to Dr. Christine Ferdinand and her invaluable help in the Old Library.
Some might think that the student in search of funding opportunities is the product of the modern world. One will be surprised to learn that the same pecuniary insecurity touched the medieval student at a time when the university had just emerged as an institution. In the 13th century, the Italian, French and then English... Continue Reading →
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